Patching the National Jugular

Our national jugular is gushing while President Obama and the Republican and Democrat Congressional leadership busy themselves with discussing the efficacy of hang nails. Not a single problem they are mulling over today will be fixed by any of their “solutions.” Why? Because they are fixated on raising taxes on the middle class, increasing the nation’s debt limit, robbing the middle class of private sector profits and of distributing them to the unemployed. Cutting spending and living within the budget, plus maintaining the nation’s liberty and freedom, is not nearly as important to them as winning elections.

Obama doesn’t seem to understand that there are not enough rich people in the nation for one hundred percent of their confiscated taxes to make a dent in the national debt, no matter how high he and the Congressional leaders raise taxes. And he doesn’t seem to understand that we don’t need more political deals, we need solutions. To paraphrase one of our founding fathers, both political parties must either hang together or Obama’s tax increases will hang them separately.

Wait, wait, Obama says he is only going to raise taxes on the rich, not the middle class! What Obama is really saying is that he intends to tax successful people, not rich people. After four years of observing him in operation, all America should know that Obama routinely says one thing and then deliberately does the opposite. It is called Obamaism. Any middle class couple who believes that Obama is only going to raise taxes on the rich is naive to the extreme or just plain stupid. Obama lives by the old rule that you can make the poor rich by making the rich poor. He doesn’t understand that we can’t tax our way out of debt, we have to grow our way out.

Obama defines being rich as couples who earn more than $250,000 a year. That is not rich, that is middle class. The really rich are making political donations to Obama, enjoying the tax exemptions he gives them in return, and laughing up their sleeves. So guess who is going to be forced to pay these new taxes? That’s right, the middle class. Obama’s intention is to rob the middle class of their hard earned profits and spread them around to the entitlement class, those who won’t work and who don’t pay income taxes — more Obamaism. He doesn’t realize that everyone should pay taxes. It is the American way and the only really fair thing to do.

As best I can figure it out, President Obama intends to bury our nation under an unsustainable mountain of debt, burden us with rampant unemployment, break our national entrepreneurial spirit by insisting that the middle class lug around an unjustifiably heavy tax burden, destroy private middle class industry, sap off any individual wealth that is generated, distribute it to those who have not earned it, and in the process punish America by reducing it to a third world economic status.

Isn’t it time that the President and the House and Senate learned that our fiscal problems are not caused by a shortage of tax money; they are caused by over spending and a refusal to get our fiscal house in order? The only way to get a gushing jugular under control is by taking drastic action. Certainly most American citizens agree that we must pay as we go and that it is necessary to eliminate as much waste, fraud, abuse, duplication and inefficiency as possible. But more than that, we must balance the budget and arrest big-government expansion and paternalism, eliminate over-spending, and bring to a halt the amassing of crushing mountains of debt.

Smaller government is as much of a must as cutting spending — not just cutting spending growth — and freezing the size of the federal government. We don’t need to do these things just so we can have good government, though good government will be one of the results, we need to do it for the sake and welfare of our children and grandchildren. It is the wise and noble thing to do.

How long can the Democrat and Republican parties avoid national economic catastrophe? — it won’t solve itself and it won’t go away. First, it is necessary to agree on principle; the details can be worked out later, and not as some sequestration down the road gimmick like the one we are currently going through.

The first principle is that the size of the federal government has to be cut, not drastically but enough to let everyone in Washington know that this is not business as usual; it is a very serious effort. The second principle is to cut personnel and spending back to some previously acceptable budgetary level. If you reduce the personnel and monetary size of the federal government, by default you reduce the size of the national debt, spend less money and concoct fewer rules and regulations to bedevil the private sector. It may even be wise or necessary to partially freeze government spending and hiring.

This will not solve the nation’s revenue and debt problems, but it will provide a modicum of control, economic stability, and flexibility and keep the government from growing larger — until common sense reductions can be worked out. It will also send a message worldwide that Obamaism is dead and economically America is back and ready to assume its position of world economic leadership.

General Jerry Ralph Curry (Ret.)is a decorated combat veteran, Army Aviator, Paratrooper, Ranger and retired Army Major General. For nearly forty years he has served his country both in the military and as a Presidential political appointee, including for the Carter, Reagan & Bush 41 administrations.

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